Hollow
by grimdarkcinnamon
Summary: Without love they're the real ghosts. AU, musings of the ones left behind after the events of Death Note. Vaguely MattxMisa, very MattxMello and MisaxLight.
1. Withdrawal

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. If you were by some chance looking to buy the rights to it, go somewhere else. After you read and review this, of course.

---

He walks in, she says hello.

He catches himself remembering the way things used to be, and he knows she's doing the same. The shock of the pain would never dull. Time's supposed to heal, but it can't dissolve the shrapnel underneath the skin. Nothing can.

He brings the cigarette to his mouth, and recalls the way he'd stop as soon as he got that look. Back when he'd known what it was to be complete. Before his life had been stolen. Before all beauty, all meaning, all trust and belief and _love_ had been ripped out from underneath him by a goddamn notebook. She has to ask him to stop, and he does reluctantly.

Her eyes start to water and she bites her lip, holds back tears like she always, every fucking day and every fucking night. She can only show as much weakness as he does, and he wears his mask perfectly. Despite it all, she still has to be a star, and stars are light. Stars don't make things darker. It's not allowed.

She remembers again how the man that had been her Light, her God, had held her the first time, and the promise he'd made. She still can't see why, why he had to die. He was only looking for a better world. He only wanted to make it all better.

…but she knows that ideal killed too many others. And she knows he'll always remember the last day he ever saw _his_ light. Set out to find hers, to find him and kill him, to prove that after all this boy was good enough for the one he'd followed. To avenge him. To find the last piece of him even if that was in his murderer, because the chains of love are broken ones and cold ones. Cold as ice, cold enough to burn you if you hold on too long. If you hold too tight.

It ended as the greatest kind of tragedy, beauty ripped down and destroyed by knives made of lies and hatred and oh yes, the same kind of cold.

The cold that's everywhere.

The violence of nature shocks them both, as they watch it played out, as they watch it burn down their lives. And they'd both prefer anything to it, anything else. So they run to each other. Two shattered halves, but their jagged edges will never allow them solace again.

And as they withdraw into themselves, they find their own edges cutting into them, and they recognize the taste of blood, their own but not really theirs. Never theirs, because they'd given themselves to ghosts. So they release, fall, crash. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Isn't that just life? Yes. C'est la vie.

If only they could sleep a little longer, stay alone in those dreams. Alone, because truly in their minds they're only a part of one true whole, and when they're together it's still one whole, separate and perfect and safe. When they wake up they remember the other part is nothing more than a memory, nothing more than a few scars on the world and on themselves, and once again they can feel nothing but the cold.

Neither loves now. Neither really even lives. At least they can understand that.

---

Author's Note: This one was really, really hard to write. In terms of holding on to myself, not in terms of difficulty of composition. I can't imagine how it'd be to lose someone you love like that, to have your other half ripped away from you, but I partially wrote it as catharsis. My cousin and godmother were murdered five days before Christmas, and I've been writing more since then, I think. It's the best means of coping I've found, and anyways, I've had more inspiration. As one friend put it, damage breeds art.

This story will be dedicated, then, to her husband and his girlfriend.

I'm sorry.


	2. Bloodshed

_The other night, dear, I dreamt I held you in my arms. When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, so I hung my head and cried. You were my sunshine, my only sunshine, you made me happy when skies were grey. You'll never know, dear, how much I loved you- how could they take my sunshine away?_

Today she breaks, on the subway she sees someone-

Someone who brings up too many memories. Only bears a passing resemblance, but it's still too much. Too much, too soon. Too fucking soon.

Shouldn't have died so soon.

She comes home, and remembers why she decided they wouldn't have big knives in their house. Because of days like this. And she misses, she misses fearing for her life not from herself, but from the choices she followed because she followed love- she followed his ideal. His kind of justice. Followed it, did everything for it.

And yet she doesn't fear for her life at all, even though she's standing here with the bottle of pills in her hand, cap off and on the counter, because she thinks- she knows- her life was stolen the same day her love was. Same day her bright, shining future was taken.

And her one friend, the one who understands despite all the conflict and all the bloodshed- he slams the door open and sees her, shaking, collapse on the floor. He wonders what to do, doesn't take the kind of immediate action expected, simply because he is the one that understands her. Life is sacred, but this is not life. Still, he comes to hold her like he always does, to let her know once again that she isn't alone.

And she hurts oh-so-much worse, because she remembers that day again, in flashes of bright shining light like her bright shining Light and his bright shining future and how it's all been covered in dirt. His body, buried. Future, buried. Hope, buried. All in one coffin in one place in the ground. The place she knew she'd already lost her life.

And now, soon, she'll lose even pretense of it. They'll bury her next to him, she hopes. Maybe…

She's flickered out. Even the brightest stars fall.

As he cradles her body, he cries. He'd never been one for crying- of course, he was also determined to live. And yet, and yet, he'd considered something completely contradictory to that in so many eyes too many times, and she'd enacted it. Not a survivor. A liver. Not just a breather and a drinker and an eater, but someone human and alive and determined to blind the world with brilliance. Neither of them could do that any more, because that required someone-

not broken. Not so damn shattered, not so cracked.

Wasn't his fault they smashed everything up.

Why so much bloodshed? He can't ask why for the latest casualty- he knows why. But why is the world so cruel? What did this even start with?

And he remembers another thing that sends daggers through his body. How they'd argue about God and faith and damnation and salvation and humanity and all that shit so regularly.

How could fate be so cruel as to steal these lives? So many? How could a loving God do this?

But he'd get a response. You need the pain to find the love. You need the dark to see the light. You need incompletion to recognize wholeness. It's all part of something bigger, because this suffering is only the darkness needed for every masterpiece. Shine on 'til tomorrow. You have to believe that.

What if today's the end of the fucking world? What if there is no tomorrow?

Because it sure as hell feels like tomorrow's not coming any time soon. The bodies are piled up so high none of those left can even see the sun, and there used to be flowers but they're stained with blood now and he knows whose.

Where's the salvation here? Seems like there's no tomorrow and seems like this is nothing but endless revenge and suffering and hatred.

He remembers in one of the old stories, it's just blood and blood and more blood until some god steps in and offers forgiveness. Doesn't look like that's going to happen, not that it could. There's going to be nobody left to forgive.

He hates that he can understand so well why she's gone. He hates that she left him here. He hates, he hates, he hates, but there's one thing he hopes.

He hopes she's finally safe.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. I didn't write You Are My Sunshine or Let It Be.


End file.
